Monday, March 5, 2012

Math Texts As 'Crap'

An editor let's loose about "crap" in your kids' math textbooks:


It starts off this way:
"There may be a reason you can’t figure out some of those math problems in your son or daughter’s math text and it might have nothing at all to do with you. That math homework you're trying to help your child muddle through might include problems with no possible solution. It could be that key information or steps are missing, that the problem involves a concept your child hasn’t yet been introduced to, or that the math problem is structurally unsound for a host of other reasons."
 And then later, this:
"...[the] project manager mused to me aloud, 'I want to know who buys this crap.' Crap. That was the word she used after all her exhausting efforts trying to make a silk purse out of this pig’s ear. My reply to her was, 'I want to know who buys it twice.' Because that’s the only way educational publishers make money, on repeat sales. Those books are out there now in print, on the shelves in the publisher’s warehouse, being packed and shipped to a school near you."

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